The reason for this is that you get paid for YouTube videos through Google ads, and, aside from YouTube keeping 45% of these ads’ revenues, the CPM (per-thousand-click rates) is just too low.

How is this possible? I mean, we know about a lot of people that make millions from YouTube.

For example…

PewDiePie made $7.2 million in 2014 with his company Pewdie Productions, which is based on his 40+ million subscribers channel although he sells a lot of merchandise and earns money through G2A affiliate links.

This is a number of views that is really hard to match –or to even get close to. However, you are probably not looking to make millions on YouTube, so you don’t mind not being able to reach so many views, right?

This is when you start to look for more realistic cases… and it’s when your illusions start to get crushed.

See the following case:

How Much Do Vloggers Really Get Paid? Olga Kay’s Case and How Most Revenue Evaporates

What Are the Best Ways to Make Money as a Vloggers on Youtube?

What we can learn from studying PewDiePie and Olga Kay is that you need to use YouTube as a fuel channel to sell and advertise your own stuff or affiliate product, but not as your main income.

The secret to really make YouTube a business is using this platform as a content marketing tool. YouTubers get paid the big bucks for selling other stuff thanks to their videos.

This is exactly what Olga Kay does and the reason why she must make much more than the measly $14,000 she seems to receive from YouTube each year. She can’t make a living only from making videos, she makes a living thanks to diversifying and using other forms of income than the Google ads featured in her videos.

This is easy for any starter through affiliate links.

There are a lot of affiliate programs like Clickbank or Amazon that are accessible to anyone. You can get paid if someone clicks a link to their products in your videos’ description box, for example.

It’s even better to have your own website and sell your own stuff –courses, ebooks, etc.- there while using YouTube to attract buyers.

However, this is not easy either. Basically, you can rely on affiliate links in the beginning to make some extra money as a starter, but don’t expect to win a lot of money using this method. You will still need a lot of views and a big audience.

The truth is that YouTube partnership alone doesn’t pay very well. What is even worse is that ads companies are paying less and less because of the huge population making videos for them to advertise within.

This leaves the typical YouTuber starter to having to think about a strategy to be able to really earn money from their videos.

Just like Olga says, the key is to diversify, and YouTube is only one of the many tools you should use to promote yourself and your work.